


Life's Next Victim

by Arvak



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Peter Hale Character Study, Peter Hale's POV, Very depressing, You probably won't like this, but I wrote it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arvak/pseuds/Arvak
Summary: Derek is in the hospital, comatose. Peter is sick of not being able to feel. And Stiles' curiosity urges him to feel what Peter is feeling... Nothing.-I'm performing my own character study of Peter Hale. I believe that the best way to get a true feel for a character (for the ability to relate to them, identify with them, truly know them) is to lift them to the highest of their highs, then drop them to the lowest of their lows. This is one of my Peter's lows.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Life's Next Victim

The wind brushed his hair across his forehead, like a gentle caress. The smooth air slid across his cheek and he closed his eyes, basking in the cool breeze. His clothes buckled and swayed with every particularly strong gust, and he himself swayed forward. His feet stayed planted on the concrete, but if he let himself, he already felt like he was falling. He already felt his mind slipping into a deep silence, hushed by death. All of the loud thoughts of anger, pain, loss - they all fell away, carried away by the wind.

He had to work hard to take control of his body, but when he did, he pressed his palm to his chest, right over his beating heart, and felt no erratic rhythm. No off-beat pulse of freight or joy. Just... nature, blandly pushing on. The beat of his heart held no emotion. It was simply a means to keep him alive.

For what?

The fire burnt away all he could ever feel. No fear could send his adrenaline surging, no love could weaken his legs, no arousal could flush his cheeks. He acts so put-together, for all that it's worth, but he feels like the pieces that made him were as empty and hollow as the house he should've died in.

He was so sick of feeling nothing. He just wanted something to rattle his bones. _Anything_. _Any_ emotion.

But his emotion was gone. He was nothing. He was just a body with a twisted sense of morality prowling land he shouldn't be walking on. What did it mean to be alive? What was living if not filled with sentimentality of emotion? What was the point if he can't find a reason to care? But he had no heart - just a necessary muscle that pumped the blood that gave life to his corpse. If he explained it this way to anyone who thought he was even a fraction of a descent person, he'd watch them leave in a hurry and never see them again.

He wasn't alive. He may look like it, may even act like it, but he's only a corpse whose body systems began working again because of a magic defibrillator. There was nothing inside of this mass of cells. Just a human husk masking an empty soul.

He was a monster.

And so he stood alone, eyes closed, his world tipping towards the end...

It was so quiet...

" _Peter!_ "

Two arms wrapped around his waist and pulled hard. His elbow ached when he fell onto his side with all of his weight and he let out a low growl, already glaring as he turned his head, but then was left only to gasp and duck his head when a cobra-fast fist met his mouth.

It hurt. Pain seemed to be the only thing left he could still feel.

As if he never woke from his catatonic state. What made life different from a coma? Was it the ability to move? Or was it the ability to think? The ability to feel?

Perhaps he wasn't alive at all.

Stiles began to scream at him, his fingers digging into the meat of his shoulder while his body shook with fear. Peter could hear his heart, beating a rapid, off-beat rhythm, while his own still stayed steady and lifeless. " _What the hell were you thinking?! What are you supposed to accomplish from dying?!_ No matter what you're going through, suicide is _not_ the answer!"

Peter lifted his head and spat blood at Stiles while he shouted back, "I wasn't trying to kill myself!" He would, though. That just wasn't his original reason for standing on the edge of a very tall building.

Stiles' pretty brown eyes blinked wildly. "Then what the _hell_ were you doing?!"

Peter got his hands beneath him and spat blood on the gravel, picking himself up. "I just wanted to see if I could feel something," he grumbled. Stiles was the only person he could be honest with. Stiles was the only person who cared enough to not care.

He brushed away the debris from the skin of his forearm and wandered away from the edge of the building.

"Feel?" Stiles quietly asked from behind him. "What did you feel?"

Peter stopped and looked behind him at the boy. Stiles was staring at the edge of the building much like himself. Desperate, curious, and pulled by that need to test what life meant. Finally, the boy looked back at him and Peter sighed quietly. "I felt nothing."

He turned and ducked through the door that led back into the hospital, where Derek layed in a bed in an empty room, comatose from a head injury he couldn't quite heal from.

Irony is a cruel, twisted thing.

Peter sat down beside Derek's bed and watched noisy machines force air into his lungs. A heart-rate monitor told him his nephew still lived - upon the basest sense of the word. But it was already evident that life meant far more than a pulsing heart.

He felt a tear slide down his cheek. _Finally_ , he thought as his heart clenched and a chill ran through his body. _Finally_.

With a smile on his face, he reached forward, and turned off Derek's life support. He stood up, brushed off his shirt, and buried his hands in his pockets. He walked past the nurses that rushed into Derek's room, and left the hospital. He stepped onto the sidewalk, then turned and stared up at the building.

He met Stiles' eyes from the top. He watched the boy grip the side of the building with white-knuckled hands. And he wondered if he'd make it to where Peter got. Was he curious enough to stand on the edge and stare down at the fall that awaited him?

He didn't want an answer. He got in his car and drove to the Hale House. He made his way to the basement, where his family had burnt alive, and put a bullet in his head.

Outside, the wind caressed the face of life's next victim.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a very tortured, disturbed individual... :)
> 
> I really hope this story didn't scare anyone off. Not all of my stories are like this, I swear :P
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading... If you actually made it this far before closing the tab in a hurry... <3


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